In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Nvidia Driver on Debian 10. For those of you who didn’t know, The performance of graphics processing units (GPUs) mainly depends on drivers. Ubuntu by default uses the open-source video driver Nouveau which has limited support and features when compared with proprietary Nvidia drivers. Installing NVIDIA drivers on Ubuntu is an easy task that can be done in less than a minute. Ubuntu includes a tool that can detect the graphics card model and install the appropriate NVIDIA drivers. Alternatively, you can download and install the drivers from the NVIDIA site.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of Nvidia Driver on a Debian 10 (Buster).
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: Debian 10 (Buster).
- It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
- SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
- A
non-root sudo useror access to theroot user. We recommend acting as anon-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.
Install Nvidia Driver on Debian 10 Buster
Step 1. Before we install any software, it’s important to make sure your system is up to date by running the following apt commands in the terminal:
sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade
Step 2. Installing Nvidia Driver on Debian 10.
Run the following command to enable Non-free and Contrib repositories on Debian systems:
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
Add the following line:
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster main contrib non-free deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster main contrib non-free deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates main contrib non-free deb-src http://security.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates main contrib non-free deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster-updates main contrib non-free deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster-updates main contrib non-free
Once ready update the repository index files using the below command:
sudo apt update
Next, install nvidia-detect utility using the following command:
sudo apt install nvidia-detect
After installation execute nvidia-detect from your terminal and you should get something like the below:
You can my GPU is GT210 and the currently installed driver is from Nouveau. And also it is recommending I install the package Nvidia-legacy-340xx-driver. As suggested install the recommended driver in the previous step:
sudo apt install nvidia-driver
Once the installation is successful, reboot your system:
sudo reboot
After reboot, you can access the Nvidia control panel from the launcher or menu, which corresponds to whatever desktop environment you use. You can also launch it from a terminal by typing:
nvidia-settings
Congratulations! You have successfully installed Nvidia Driver. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the latest version of Nvidia Driver on Debian 10 Buster. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Nvidia website.
